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| Champagne flows as the Champions celebrate their unbeaten title triumph |
Sunday September 8th 2002, the day my love-hate relationship with Essex County Cricket club was born, and a microcosm of everything that has followed to this day, and this week. The week my County, became 2017s Champion County.
Though this season’s success has primarily been with red
ball and in white clothing, it all started with the white ball and a team
bedecked in a yellow, blue and red horror-show.
The 45-over Norwich Union Sunday League Division Two of that
particular year is unlikely to be recalled to readily, but that was what
changed me from someone with a vague interest in the sport to a cricket tragic.
Having restricted Surrey to 162 all out, which was slightly
inflated by top scorer Saqlain Mushtaq’s unlikely 28, the game was in Essex’s
hands and it looked like my first game would be a comfortable home win.
It still looked like a cakewalk at 137/4 with captain Ronnie
Irani and future coach Paul Grayson settled at the crease.
It STILL looked like a stroll when at 155/6, only eight more
runs were needed to chalk up a victory that would’ve gone a long way to sealing
promotion.
Unfortunately, all Hell, or should I say Helli-oake, broke
loose, heads were lost, as were wickets, and with it the game. Surrey captain
Adam Hollioake took 3/11 from 3.2 overs to skittle the tail and leave my Eagles
two short.
Despite still struggling to grasp how they lost that game to
this day, they had become my Eagles. In producing that collapse they somehow
set the tone for the hope, followed by frustration and calamity, that the next
decade and a half of supporting them has been.
There have been highs along the way, most notably the 2008
Friends Provident Trophy win, where I found myself sat behind David Masters’
uncle at Lords and had to be very careful how critical I was of his bowling.
But the theme of ‘nearly but not quite’ has never been far from the best
summation of an Essex match or season.
One of Essex’s party pieces over the last 15 years has been
to finish third in Division Two of the Championship, either by only mounting a
promotion challenge once the top two had pulled away, or by starting
promisingly and fading.
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| Tendo with the Trophy - Essex upgraded from the Division 2 title won in 2016 |
One such third place came in 2013, and the strong finish
that year couldn’t make up for the points and pride lost in the June of that
season at home to Lancashire.
Starting the second innings at Chelmsford 125 runs adrift of
their visitors, Essex contrived to last just 14.3 overs second time around,
getting bowled out for 20. Listening to that on the radio was like having a
particularly graphic car crash described in minute and painstaking detail.
That third place was repeated in 2014 and 2015 before Essex
defied the odds, and all common sense, to finally seal promotion in 2016, the
year that only one team was to go up, by cruising to the Division Two title.
In white ball cricket the hope and promise has been even
more emphatically followed by abject disappointment. Since the 2008 trophy win,
Essex have won a truly wretched two of 14 knockout matches across the T20 and
50/40 over competitions.
Often cruising through the group stages, or at least putting
an excellent run together to progress, the Eagles have been just as
unsuccessful at home as away or on neutral ground when the fixture becomes
winner takes all.
Even this year, one that will be remembered for all the
right reasons, also included the customary knockout heartbreak. Having topped
the group and received a bye through the quarterfinal stage, Alastair Cook and
captain Ryan Ten Doeschate both hit centuries as Essex posted 370/5 in the semi
against Notts.
Unfortunately Samit Patel and Steven Mullaney spoiled my
premature thoughts of where to sit at Lords, making the huge chase look
relatively comfortable for the eventual champions.
The unfinished business of one-day cricket aside, some
wrongs have been righted, some promise has been fulfilled, and the club that
has caused me as much stress and agony as pleasure, have achieved the thing
that felt furthest from their grasp through most of my time as a fan and
member.
Not only did they have to put a season of consistent cricket
together to achieve this, but they did it twice on the trot from the bottom
tier.
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| Division one leading wicket taker - 75-wicket Jamie Porter |
As I sat on the pavilion benches watching Cook and Nick
Browne compile a record breaking opening stand of 373 in the first round of
floodlit Championship games, I kept looking up at the scoreboard and laughing.
Suddenly the team I’d watched make cricket look tough for
more than half of my life were making it look remarkably easy, and I’m still
not quite sure what to make of it.
